The Adversary - 4 (9 page)

He waited in the thickening fog until midnight, when farsensing conditions were optimal, then groped cautiously northeastward beyond the Betic Cordillera to the Tanu citadel of Afaliah.

When he was certain he had identified its concentration of lifeaura, he refined his thought-beam to the slenderest possible needle, tuned it to the intimate mode of his sister, and called.

HAGEN: Do you hear?

CLOUD: Yes. Where are you.

HAGEN: [Image.] CLOUD: !! So that's It! No wonder the Flood destroyed Muriah.

It seems incredible that mindpower alone was responsible.

FeliceHAGEN: -and her devils!

CLOUD: Hagen, we had to.

HAGEN: You rationalize after the fact, Marcdaughter.

CLOUD: I thought you were going to have Diane work on that damn Hamletesquerie. You're becoming a great bore.

HAGEN: You and Papa combined couldn't shrink me. Why expect better of her?

CLOUD: She loves you, stupid. It helps immeasurably in redaction.

HAGEN: Ah, yes. I should have remembered you and your Tanu darlingCLOUD: Damn you and your can of cranial worms, brother.

HAGEN: Shall we postpone the pleasantries? What happened in Goriah?

CLOUD: [Cinematic event replay.] HAGEN: Total fiasco. So much for our projected alliance with Nodonn! Nice for you that your lad Kuhal survived ... I guess we revert to our original Aiken Drum scenario, then.

He won't be as easy to manipulate as Nodonn would have been, but we'll probably muddle through. Who knows? The kid might be having his own doubts by now about his future as King of the Elves. He may just decide that our plan to return to the Milieu has a subtle appealCLOUD: Hagen, Papa's coming.

HAGEN: Oh, shit. When?

CLOUD: He was vague. He farspoke me this morning, after Aiken won his duel with Nodonn. He had been watching.

HAGEN: He would.

CLOUD: He said he'd come to Europe just as soon as modifications of the cerebroenergetic enhancer were completed. He's bringing it - and the master computer, and the X-laser array from the observatory.

HAGEN: Good Godhow?

CLOUD: They raised Walter Saastamoinen's four-masted schooner. That seventy-metre brute is big enough to carry half the apparatus on Ocala.

HAGEN: Damn-I told Veikko he should have scuttled her in deeper water or blown her up! Sentimental ass. Let me think ... she'd take at least a month to get here loaded.

CLOUD: Papa's furious that you started the overland trek.

HAGEN: Did he threaten any long-distance mind-blast?

CLOUD: No. He was very restrained. He just told me to warn you not to attempt any contact with Aiken Drum-or else face dire consequences.

HAGEN: ?? Strange that he didn't farspeak me himself ...

CLOUD: The CE rig is down for reinstallation on the boatHAGEN: Hell, babe, he has plenty of watts to bespeak me in broad daylight, with nothing but the ol' naked grey. Or-?

!!! [Image.] CLOUD: We were right about Felice's d-jump. She rode down his peripheral and scragged him horribly. Fire-flayed him from the neck downHAGEN: [Hastily suppressed image.] CLOUD: [Pain.] He's been floating in the regeneration tank since June.

HAGEN: Cloudie, what if Felice did more than broil his bod?

What if she cooked his brain, too? What if he pasted himself together again as well as he could-healed his worst body injuries, but didn't dare stay in the soup long enough for a complete neural refit? Hell-that could take eight, nine months easy!

CLOUD: If his metafaculties are crippled, it would explainHAGEN: You bet your sweet life it would. He'd speak you rather than me on i-mode because you're more farsensitive. Chances are, he can't crank up anything approaching his normal armamentarium! And if he's unable to handle a full-zorch creative metaconcert, then there's no more danger of his nailing us with a long-distance psychozap! Oh, Cloudie, baby-this could be our big break! He's going to have to fight fair! Get really close to us if he hopes to coerce or mind-blast. Let him try, with Aiken Drum and his mob of exotics on our sideCLOUD: When Papa farspoke me he said ... he said he would do his best to worth things out for us. If we could only trust him!

HAGEN: [Expletive.] CLOUD: He should know that we wouldn't let the Milieu authorities come back to the Pliocene for him.

HAGEN: Wouldn't we? ...

CLOUD: You-youhe loves us!

HAGEN: His bloody inhuman brand of love-! He loved Mama, and we know what he did to her. Didn't you ever wonder why?

CLOUD: This is allHAGEN: In the Ocala library. Ever notice that the computer entries on the Metapsychic Rebellion are all baldfaced and frank about most aspects of the conflict-except for the bottom line, the goal of the whole damn thing! Why did they have to fight, for God's sake? The Rebel objective: "The fostering of Mental Man and the assurance that he will take his rightful place in the Coadunate Milieu." What the hell kind of war motivation is that?

CLOUD: Papa and his people wanted the Human Polity to dominateHAGEN: Not that simple! There was something else. You have to pick it up from hints in the other data entries. Subliminal boojum hints as skittish as those things you almost, but not quite, see out of the corner of your eye! Papa's Rebellion had something to do with us. With human children. He planned to do something so terrible that his own wife felt justified in trying to murder him-and the Milieu declared war on him after a hundred thousand years of unbroken peace.

CLOUD: It's over. Finished long ago.

HAGEN: Sister dear, it hasn't happened yet.

CLOUD: Stop it Hagen stop it! The important thing-the only thing-is for us to get away! Away from him, away from this miserable primitive world where our minds are all alone and hopeless. We can't lose sight of that goal for any reason.

HAGEN: ... Well?

CLOUD: We must take a chance and contact Aiken Drum. You must come to Afaliah with all speed. It shouldn't take long, now that you've reached the Mediterranean. Sail to the neck of the Balearic Peninsula. There's a very good track called the Aven Road that leads directly to Afaliah. Once you arrive, we can arrange a meeting. Kuhal says ... he suggested to me a certain bargaining factor that might assure Aiken's cooperating with us. We farspoke together just after Aiken defeated Nodonn. Kuhal didn't want me to lose hope.

HAGEN: Well, what's his idea?

CLOUD: [Image.] HAGEN: I'll be damned. Right there in Afaliah?

CLOUD: They're in the dungeon. There's no one left here to contest my authority over them, so I've been squeezing all day with the help of the local chief redactor. We've almost got it.

HAGEN: Aiken Drum'll kiss our asses to get hold of this!

CLOUD: Don't talk like a fool. Even with this information as a tradeoff, we'll have to be extremely careful dealing with him.

Aiken's dangerous, Hagen. Perhaps more dangerous now than Papa.

HAGEN: Bullshit.

CLOUD: In the Goriah duel, Aiken stood up to everything that Nodonn could throw at him-including that photon-cannon Spear. But there was something else. As he killed Nodonn and Queen Mercy, he subsumed their metapsychic complexus.

HAGEN: Say what?

CLOUD: [Image.] A very obscure phenomenon. I remember that the Poltroyan entry in the computer mentioned it in connection with some ancestor-worship thing. It's very abstruse.

Never fully documented among humans. But it seems Aiken did it. The whole Castle of Glass in Goriah is buzzing with the news. How useful the powers will be to him remains to be seen. Kuhal says some Tanu believe the subsumption may kill Aiken.

HAGEN: Wishful thinking ... Listen, Cloud, we'll have to get his cooperation somehow. We can't fight him for the timegate site, and building the Guderian device will mean batting about from one end of Europe to the other gathering raw materials. To say nothing of conscripting Milieu-trained technicians to work out the trickier bits in building the thing. Our only hope of success depends upon cultivating the goodwill of this brain-gobbling little Dracula. Or coercing him into helping us.

CLOUD: More than that depends on Aiken.

HAGEN: ?

CLOUD: Kuhal. He and the surviving invaders were taken.

They're imprisoned in Goriah now, incommunicado under a sigma-field, charged with high treason. The penalty for that is death.

CHAPTER THREE

"You are summoned to judgment," Commander Congreve announced.

The 129 survivors of Nodonn's defeated little army came together and formed a silent double file with Kuhal Earthshaker and Celadeyr of Afaliah at the head. Having been warned by the smirking human lackeys who brought them supper, the Tanu knights were wearing their glass armour, cleaned up as well as they could manage. They glowed in splendid defiance-creator cyan and coercer sapphire and psychokinetic rose-gold, with the few combatant farsensors in the company resembling statues carved from shining amethyst.

A squad of Congreve's human troopers marched in carrying covered baskets. At a mental command they passed down the lines of prisoners, distributing sets of crystal chains. Each insurgent freely bound himself or herself with the symbol of submission to Tana, manacles about gauntleted wrists, the central snaplink fastened to the golden torc.

"We are ready," said Kuhal. Magnificent in halide radiance, he towered over the human commandant of the Goriah garrison.

He eyed the twenty-second-century weapon Congreve carried, incongruous against his exotic parade armour. "And you will not require that."

"The sacred chains bind us in honour," growled old Celadeyr.

Congreve's mental aspect was glacial. "So did your oath of fealty to King Aiken-Lugonn, which you swore at the Grand Loving! Follow me." He turned, lifting the Matsushita laser carbine to a ceremonial port arms, and led the way from the detention barracks into the outer ward of the Castle of Glass.

Fog swathed the heavily damaged facade. Even though it was less than sixteen hours after the failed attack, much of the debris had already been cleared away. Piles of translucent blocks and the downed tools of workers indicated that repairs were in progress. The faerie lighting of the towers was only a violet-andgold blur tonight, with the overall effect oddly mutilated since the great spire of the castle had been blasted away by Nodonn.

The prisoners passed through the scorched ruin of the main gate and into the central keep. Most of the corridors had been cleaned up, and only an occasional melt-scar or boarded casement remained as souvenirs of the desperate fighting that had taken place.

The knights marched along bearing their chains proudly, their metapsychic luminosity overwhelming the lesser light of the oilfuelled wall sconces. At length they came into the main audience chamber of the Goriah citadel, which the usurper had caused to be almost completely refurbished. The floor was tiled in gold and midnight-purple. Pillars of twisted amber glass supported a high vaulted ceiling spangled with tiny starlike lamps. The dais was the only bright place in the room. Behind it shone the precious-metal sunburst of Nodonn Battlemaster, retained by the usurper because a solar disk had also been the traditional heraldic cognizance of the first-coming Lugonn. But the ornamental sun-face was blank now, its apollonian smile gone along with recollections of drifting ashes and a tarnished silver hand tumbling out of the dawn sky.

In the place of honour stood a black-marble throne, surrounded by twenty lesser seats, all empty. On the throne sat a little human eating an apple: the Nonborn King of the ManyColoured Land. He had evidently just come in out of the mist, for he wore a Tanu-style storm suit of golden leather still glistening with beads of moisture. Its visored hood was thrown back and the neck open. Aiken-Lugonn's throat was bare. He required no artificial stimulus to mental operancy.

The prisoners came before the dais and waited while Congreve made his brief telepathic announcement and then retired with the guard detail to the shadows in the rear of the hall.

The King munched his apple and let his gaze rove over the depleted battle-company. He had no metapsychic nimbus. In fact, his appearance was peculiarly wan, with only his dark red hair and brows and the eyes like little chunks of jet giving life to his face.

Kuhal Earthshaker spoke to Celadeyr on the intimate mode: So he lives Celo ... Alas for the rumour that he choked in the Devouring!

Not that one. But he does look psychodyspeptic.

Both Nodonn and Mercy-Rosmar-! To subsume either would have been beyond the power of our mightiest legendary heroes.

What are we to make of a being who assimilates two such minds? Perhaps it is the final confirmation that he is indeed the Adversary.

I didn't need any confirmation. Only you younger ones doubted.

Not true Celo. The Craftsmaster didn't believe it. Nor does Lady Morna-Ia. I know that even my brother Nodonn himself doubted as his end approached ...

He believed.

He doubted. Who knew Nodonn as I did-unless perhaps my lost mind-twin Fian Skybreaker? Nodonn was the eldest son of my father Thagdal and mother Nontusvel and I served him for three hundred and eighty-five years as Second Lord Psychokinetic. Aiken Drum the Adversary-? Nonsense. Nodonn hated and feared this parentless wariangle as a Lowlife upstart and adventurer. But he never accepted him as the ultimate Foe.

Tchah! Even the Firvulag know the bastard for what he is!

Why do you think the Little People connived with us-showed us the aircraft in return for our promise to return Sharn's Sword?

The Adversary's coming foreshadows the Nightfall War, and they cannot fight the last battle without their sacred Sword. O Kuhal believe! Nodonn never doubted. You are the doubter!

And I know why. That North American woman is to blame ... the one Boduragol paired you with in the healingOld fool. Were it not for Cloud I would still be half a mind.

You still are. The wrong half! All your Tanu instincts your racial soul died with FianWretchedoldman STOP! Not you not anyone may fault my courage in this doomed undertaking! Nor my loyalty to Nodonn and our battle-religion. This matter of the Adversary is beside the point as we stand here flagrant traitors brought to judgment.